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Valkerie's Complete Guide to Paladin
WARNING** This guide is under construction, information my not be complete of correct. Greeting and salutations fellow adventurers of all levels. I welcome you to the most in depth guide to Paladin you'll find on this wiki. Everything you will need and want to know you can find here, everything from a "what is" section to advanced tactics and variable equipment. So you've stumbled onto the paladin page and my guide caught your eye, good. This is the kind of guide you'll want to read and heed. It will contain information that will inevitably save your bacon one of these days. But how can one guide be so important? Simple, the writer has tons of experience on the job. I, Valkerie of Asura, have been a Paladin for over 3 years now, I've been in many heavy situations and have learned to predict the tide of battle. For those of you who are experienced Paladins you know what I speak of, but for the rest of you, I've written this next section for you guys. Just so you don't get confused this guide may be ackward for you, it's written in the manner of language I use on a daily basis. If for any reason you can't understand this or something seems to be amiss than just hop on Asura snd sent a tell to "Valkerie". If you aren't on Asura then send me POL mail at nx_valkerie@pol.com. What Is A Paladin So just what is Paladin? Well, Paladin is many things. A Paladin can function as the damage receiver (tank) for the entire party, or can be a damage dealer or even a healer. For those of you who question that last sentence please continue to read. Really the main job of a Paladin is to tank, to take the damage for the party, but it can do more, this is where pure skill and experience comes into play. But we still haven't answered the big question, what is a paladin? A Paladin is actually a combination of 2 jobs slammed into one kick ass package. The back story behind what a Paladin is states that it started out as Warriors, through long hours of spiritual training, gained the ability to cast White Magic spells. Also through rigorous training these Warriors have mastered the art of defense and now specialize in it. So there we have it, a Paladin is basically a Warrior that can cast white magic and specialize in defensive capabilities, but is this all they can do? Not in the least. You see, a Paladin is more than just a tank, it's also a damage dealer and healer, as stated earlier, but we'll discuss later in the section labeled "Roles". For know let's discuss why you should choose to be a Paladin. Why Be a Paladin As a Paladin of over 3 years I've got a lot to say bout the job, a lot of positive things. I've been in some of the heaviest and most difficult situations where the only thing that would ensure my survival was if I was at the top of my game and on top of everything in my domain. Paladin can be a great tool that, if properly mastered, can take you to the stars and beyond, but we want to know "why Paladin"? The real question isn't "why paladin", anyone can sell their job to someone else. This is the type of job that takes to you and becomes part of you. Why Paladin? Why not, as Paladin you can solo some pretty tough mobs, including those pesky cactuar NMs. With Paladin you can go farther, outlast others, be the last person standing and in most cases, it gets the job done. The How's As said earlier I've got over 3 years under my buckle, 3 years of blood, sweat and tears. None of my skill came to me overnight, it took a lot of work. So just how do you do Pally? Well you'll have to know your weapons, know your equipment, know your accessories, know your job (the is the big one) and you'll have to know yourself (this is the biggest one). Why know yourself? You need to know you reaction times to certain events such as enemy TP moves. The difference in the time it takes you to do that Shield Bash or activate Sentinel could be the difference between life and death. Knowing your job means knowing what you have at your disposal. As a Paladin you have a great number of job traits, abilities and weapon skills. You just have to know what to use and when. Now when I said know your weapons I was serious, and I'll give a short example. A long time ago a member of my linkshell turned me onto a sword that looked like an ordinary weapon, it was a Company Sword. What I didn't know about and was promptly informed of was the fact that the base damage increases by 2 for every 3rd member of a party for a max of 54 base damage for a party of 6. Know your gear. So what do we do with a sword like this. We use is, but not in any old situation. Personally I use it on hybrid setups where I need to tank and DD at the same time. Remember that a Paladin holds enmity from many things, one of them being the damage coming from your weapon. This makes your weapon twice a valued because it help hold hate and do some DD. Equipment and accessories function the same way. But you can't just slip on any old piece of armor and expect great things. Remember, everything from actions to gear is conditional and situational. Choose your gear carefully, know what you're about to fight and gear up accordingly. Personally, I have probably 57 pieces of gear for my Paladin alone. 57 pieces of gear ranging from a DD setup to a tanking setup to an MP setup for PLing and everything in between. With a setup like that you can fill in lots of spots. Sound like fun yet? If so then let's take a look at the races and how that affects the job. Races Hume The Hume is known across the game as a well rounded race that can do most anything, this holds quite true. Humes are strong and hardy with a good balance between INT and MND and have a decent MP pool. Their STR adds to their weapon skills in which more damage translates to more enmity. Their Vitality and Agility allows them to tank more smoothly with plenty of parrying. The balanced INT & STR affects their white magic and any stat-dependent gear they might be wearing, like the Dainslaif. Their MP pool allows for plenty of hate control and healing to keep them from getting into sticky situations in a party. Humer also have high Charisma whi affects you "Killer" effects such as Undead Killer. Elvaan Elvaan certainly can't go wrong if you wish to play as Paladin on it. You'll find that Elvaan are very hardy when it comes to tanking, this can be attributed to their increased defense and VIT stats, however, your MP and AGI stats are lower than the other races. However, with the highest Strength in the game, that’s hardly a problem. You’ll also enjoy the highest Mind in the game to cap your Cures faster, and at Lv.35, Auto Refresh nullifies the low MP. Elvaan also have the second-highest of both Vitality and HP in the game, so taking damage isn’t difficult at all. But beware, because lower-end Intelligence means you are a little more vulnerable to black magic; however, you can very easily compensate for this with Shell spells and with a variety of high-level equipment. High Charisma means high intimidation rates on undead. On top of all that, there are few things as amazing looking as an Elvaan Paladin. May your armor shine! Mithra Galka Tarutaru A Word On Tanking By know you proably know what the term "tanking" means, but in case you don't it means to take the damage for the party. As paladin that's exactly what you'll be doing almost anytime you fight anything. Whether fighting individually or in party you will be taking the damage, at least most of the time. But how do you tank? As just a Paladin you're limited on hate control, well... It's more like a system of delayed hate control. Let's discuss you as just a Paladin with no subjob. A no subjob Paladin still has a few methods of hate control in the form of job abilities, spells and some damage. Now how do we work these? Simple, heal the damage until you have control of hate then use your job abilities to maintain that control of enmity. Sentinel is a wonderous ability which with Valor Leggings can briefly reduce the damage you take to 0 and grab lots of enmity. Rampart is an AoE effect that grants X amount of magic damage resistance and grants a defense bonus for all effected party members. Cover also help to grab control of a mob by defending a party member from damage, however this only grab a small amount of enmity. Finally we move onto your 2 hour ability, Invincible. Before we discuss Invincible we need to discuss enmity. I'm going to be using a sliding scale as an example for this ranging from 0 to 100, 0 means no hate, 100 means full hate control. Paladins are tanks no matter where they go, if they act on a mob it generates X amount more of hate than any other job. This hate can be defined by a sliding scale. Let's say you're tanking a mob for your party and you use Provoke and a weapon skill, you've just generated X amount of enmity on the scale, let's say you generated 25 on the scale. If your enmity is low on the scale and you're forced to use Invincible your hate on the scall will take a big jump, say to 70. If your hate on the scale is already 70, however, and you hit Invincible, your enmity will actually drop to a number specified by the ability. This is how Invincible works, it makes you imune to damage for a few minutes and sets your enmity at a specified number on the sliding scale. I'll say that again, if you have high enmity Invincible will actually shed enmity. Now back to enmity control. A paladin can use the subjob Warrior and take advantage of the gained job ability of "Provoke". Provoke goads an enemy into attacking you and raises your enmity. You can even stack enmity from provoke time and again. For now I refuse to even talk about /nin. This may be added later on. Subjobs PLD/WAR PLD/SAM PLD/WHM PLD/RDM PLD/BLU I have yet to do this one. Roles Tanking Regular This'll be what you do most of the time in any party, this is the nitty gritty of the job. This task calls for your tanking setup and the usual line of abilities. Provoke every 30 seconds, use sentinel to mitigate damage and maintain hate. Rampart is user for a mall defense bonus and a good amount of magic damage resistance. Use cover to take the damage for others. Shield Bash to stop those pesky enemy tp abilities and stun the mob. Damage Dealing Tanking This task calls for a slightly different setup, it calls for a hybrid setup. You want mainly Damage Dealer gear (weapon, shield, armor and accessories) but your gfear needs to be able to handle moderate to heavy tanking. With this setup you're allowed the ability to participate with the other damage dealers. With this setup be sure to coordinate weapon skills as to generate skillchains, this'll assist in hate control. Pure Tanking This section applies to those of you who fight HNMs or very high level notorious monsters. More data to come. Power Leveler/MP This setup could end up costing a good bit of money. This task calls for an MP & Refresh setup. Now if we're going just for an MP setup than we can wear a lot of mage gear and get awaw with it. If we're doing power leveling we need a more dynamic setup. We need heavier sets of armor with enmity and MP+ stats, however if we're PLing someone on higher mobs you can use your regular DD armor and mage/MP accessories. Damage Dealer This is my personal favorite part. Many players have said that a Paladin can't do damage, but they haven't tried to _play_ the job. A Paladin is basically a defensive warrior with magic with the capability to do great things and because of that a Paladin can wear many sets of armor that a Warrior or Dark Knight can wear. In order to DD as a Paladin you need to first have your skills up to par with your level, skills affect everything on a weapon from damage dealt to accuracy to available weaponskills. Second you need to have a gear setup dedicated to DD. Weapons Sword Staff Great Sword Club Shield Working through he levels Levels 1-10 Events Shattering Stars I'll warn you on this one, it's not easy. Maat is truly a bastard. Unlike XP parties you'll be fighting one target (Maat) and do not need to worry about hate control, you need to worry about surviving. When you fight Maat he'll show up as a Paladin and will be level 70, you'll be hit for about 100 points of damage for every hit you don't block with a shield. There is a way I discovered to win this without using Invincibility, it's hard to do but can be done. We'll talk about this in a few, for now let's stick with the preliminaries. If you've already read the article on this event then you'll know that the fight takes place in Qu'Bia Arena. If this isn't you first Maat fight then you'll have to make your way to the arena youself, Maat will not teleport you nor will he for all subsequent fights. Before you can fight Maat as a Paladin you need get a Paladin's testimony. The following mobs are known to drop Paladin's Tesimonies: Antican Antesignanus (Level: 62 - 69) (Quicksand Caves) Antican Legatus (Level: 72 - 74) (Quicksand Caves) Darksteel Quadav (Level: 63 - 71) (Beadeaux, Qulun Dome) Orcish Protector (Level: 69 - 72) (Monastic Cavern) Orcish Overlord (Level: 75) (Monastic Cavern) Overlord Bakgodek (Level: 85) (Monastic Cavern) Once you have your tesimony it's time to get the necessities, so let's go over the checklist. Icarus Wing Opo-opo Necklace Sleep Potions x4 Yagudo Drink x2 Hi-potions (Optional) Good, we now have the essentials to take on maat. Now let's look at what gear setup to use. Since Maat will be hitting you for around 100 damage when not blocked by a shield we can get away with a hybrid supportive-damage dealing setup. Now this is where you decide how to build that setup but I do recommend using yout AF1 feet, the +10 Shielding skill will come in handy. As for weapons and defense you can get away with using an Espadon as your sword and an Iron Ram Shield as your shield. Great, we're all set now we need to get to the arena. If this is your first Maat fight then go to Ru'lude Gardens and trade your testimony to Maat, he will warp himself and you straight to the arena. If this isn't your first fight then you get the wondrous task to traveling to the arena by foot. Once you get to the arena you need to stop and go over your strategy and how you'll use your items. When using items in a Maat fight you need to know the order you use them, otherwise you may screw yourself over. The Icarus Wing will be the last thing you use, I say this because once you use it you'll be prohibited from using any other medicine for awhile.With that being said, let's take a look at our tactic. It's been long said that Maat's stats will reflect yours and that entering naked gives you an edge. I haven't seen a single shred of proof on this so enter with your clothes on. Now Maat operates like a Dynamis mob, he deals constant damage, casts 2 or 3 spells and has a 2 hour. He won't use any other job abilities other than Invincible, but if the fight goes on too long or if Maat thinks he has you he will use Asuran Fists and kill you in seconds. The only way to avoid Asuran Fists is to fight fight fight. So how do we have the edge here, let's look at this from a chronological view. You arrive at the BC, whether teleported or not. Be ready, this is where one hell of a fight begins. You enter the BC wearing your Opo-opo necklace. Once you have control use all your sleep potions one after the next. The Opo-opo necklace will recharge your TP to 100 after 4 drinks, this will give the advantage of starting the fight with a weaponskill and will help avoid a timeout with Asran Fists, plus it hurts Maat some. Now before you actually engage Maat you need to use a Yagudo drink. Once you've done that you need to buff up and rest. Once you have a full hp and mp pool take the necklace off and put something on the supports DD/Tanking. Ok we're ready to fight. Head forward to until you see Maat and bow to him. Engage him but be very conservitive with your mp. Flash Maat only if you really need to. Heal as normal and use Vorpal Blade when you have the TP. Try to counteract Maats moves, if he uses his 2 hour then you use Invincible. Once you're down to your last 500 hp use the Icarus Wing and slam Maat with another Vorpal Blade. By the time the fight ends you should have gotten 3-4 weaponskills off on him. If you survived the fight the congratulations you can proceed to level 75, not to mention you're just won the 2nd hardest Maat fight. If you didn't win then you should have a good idea of how to beat him. Either way that Shattering Stars for Paladin.